Music, the Market, and the Marvellous: Parisian Ferie, 1864-1900 [Hardcover]

Music, the Market, and the Marvellousexaminesf?erie, the fairy play, recovering a large swathe of the theatrical landscape of nineteenth-century Paris. Forgotten plays are rediscovered, familiar works take on new meanings, and traditional historiographical narratives about drama and 'musical theatre' are thrown into question.
Music, the Market, and the Marvellousexaminesf?erie, the French fairy play, in the last third of the nineteenth century. It is among the first book-length studies on the genre, the first in a language other than French, and the first from a musicological perspective. Sabbatini demonstrates that, contrary to conventional wisdom,f?eriewas still thriving during the fin de si?cle, giving rise to innovations such as composerlyf?erieand scientificf?erie. The plays, the theatre industry, and urban geography are discussed together, as befits a commercial genre where the marvellous was shaped by the market. Recovering this forgotten ^^ but once hugely influential ^^ repertoire provides an occasion to rethink generic taxonomies of Parisian theatre and the ontology of nineteenth-century 'popular' theatre. Sabbatini's book offers a study of a Parisian stage genre that has not previously been the subject of an English-language nor a musicological study. One of the book's great strengths, therefore, is to establish for the first time the key figures, institutions, repertoire, and aesthetic parameters of the f?erie industry between 1864 and 1900 in a comprehensive manner. He also weaves together a chronology of the genre's large-scale artistic developments and establishes a rich corpus of f?erie repertoire that is likely new to most readers. What these elements add up to is a rich portrait of the genre over thirty-six years. -- Sophie Horrocks David,Cambridge University Press

Tommaso Sabbatini,Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Bristol